First, let me thank everyone for their prayers and support yesterday.  It was, as you can imagine, a hard morning for me but God showed up in so many ways!  I really felt His presence both personally and corporately in our worship time!  So many of you were praying for me, my brother-in-law, and my family throughout the service as well as offering words of encouragement and support afterwards.  I am so grateful for all of you.  Yesterday was a great reminder of what church is really about as we worshipped together through the pain and challenges, praising a God who loves us and cares for us through our trials.

And please don’t miss out on what God was speaking to us yesterday!  As I mentioned, I don’t believe any of us would admit to using God as a genie in a lamp, waiting to grant our every wish.  We know better than that.  But we can act like we believe it sometimes.  It so much easier to simply come to God and give Him our holy “to-do” list and expect He has to preform for us.  Israel clearly struggled with this.  They saw the miracles.  They witness His power.  Still, they slipped into idolizing the Ark.  They allowed themselves to believe they could control God by doing the right things, by following a simple step-by-step list.

When life gets hard, we want to simplify things.  We want to know with certainty what will happen if we do what we think God wants us to do.  But that’s not faith.  That’s not relationship.  That’s religion and we can easily get stuck in it!  God wants us to walk in relationship with Him.  To come to Him in worship, adoration, and praise even with our hurts and heartache.  We bring ALL that we are—the good, the struggles, the concerns–and give it all to Him in the context of a loving relationship!

I would challenge you this week to spend some time looking at how you interact with God.  How do you pray?  Is it a time of praise, gratitude, thanksgiving, and humbly seeking God’s help?  Or is your time a little heavier on the requests?  I’ll be the first to admit, I can often be a bit request-heavy.  There is nothing wrong with asking God for help, sharing your concerns with Him, and seeking His blessing.  However, if our primary motivation is to get and receive from God, we might be stuck and be missing out on the amazing relationship God intended us to have with Him!

In Christ Alone,

Pastor Jan